Fledgling Heroes: Blizzard Novels for a New Generation
We are proud to announce the impending launch of a series of novels written specifically with younger Blizzard gamers in mind. This series of novels, titled Fledgling Heroes, will focus primarily on themes and topics that are relevant to teen and tween readers while still delivering epic, heart-pounding, page-turning action. At Blizzard Entertainment, we’ve been telling stories for years. Stories about demons from a plane of eternal torment and insatiable hive-mind aliens ravaging the galaxy. Tales of armies clashing mercilessly across worlds without end. These are big stories, stories that we love—but are they real enough? Do they convey the true humanity of the characters you’ve come to know and love (or hate)? Starting this year, our new Fledgling Heroes series of young adult novels, aimed at our growing tween and teen audience, will give you a chance to watch iconic Blizzard characters fall in love, overdo it with concealer, and tackle that most dangerous of raids: the emergency house party. Read on to learn more about the first novels to be released under the Flegling Heroes label . . . ---- ;Appetite Kruzz has it tough. Ever since his parents sent him away to live in cosmopolitan Stormwind, life’s been bleak. By fate or just a cruel trick of biology, he’s growing faster than the other kids. Everyone makes fun of the way he talks, and Kruzz’s body image issues are so paralyzing that he’s begun to wear a disguise to class. But then one day, he meets a gnome. Rolli’s a star forward on the flag capture team. She’s inspirational—passionate, hotheaded, and unafraid to break the rules—and shockingly, she seems really interested in Kruzz! There’s only one problem: Kruzz is an ogre! And he can’t stop eating, especially in a kingdom full of thousands of two-legged meats. Rolli might care about him, but first she’ll have to get over the fact that they look really awkward together. Meanwhile, Kruzz is forced to make the most difficult of choices: embrace Rolli as the girl he’s always wanted, or cook and eat her before she realizes he’s planning to cook and eat her. ---- ;The Anger Gauntlet Trouble is festering in the Undercity. Unruly Forsaken who were between the ages of 12 and 18 before they were reanimated are starting to question their leadership—and now these unteens have made the terrible mistake of gaining the Banshee Queen’s attention! Sylvanas Windrunner, the undisputed ruler of the Undercity, plans a masterstroke of statecraft to quell this rebellion and pacify her people. She demands that three young members of each of the Undercity’s quarters participate in a brutal gladiatorial battle to the death, where only one dead person will survive. Into this utterly foolproof recipe for continued totalitarianism are flung the contestants of the Mage Quarter: quick-witted, capable, likeable friends Catnip Nebelung and Mason Abernathy, along with resident elevator guard Gorgus the Belly-Maw. The odds are on Gorgus winning—but odds are made to be beaten! The Anger Gauntlet strives to ask difficult, eternal questions. Is it okay to take someone else’s unlife if it means saving your own? Should we trust our leaders? And are 400 pages really enough to describe an arrow’s exit wound? ---- ;Ross Harrison and the Secret Academy Eleven year-old Ross can’t stand life on the Dominion homeworld of Tarsonis. Sure, the capital of terran civilization offers plenty to do, but Ross’s adoptive parents are terrible, terrible people. His “mother” is a staunch disciplinarian who makes him eat, sleep, and go to school in the bathroom and complete 5-mile forced marches while carrying his fat brother in a backpack. And his “father” is an insufferable despot and the reigning All-Districts Hate Crimes champion. But one day, Ross receives a private holo-vid invitation. It says that he’s special, and offers him a scholarship to study at the secret military academy of the Emperor’s Legion, the elite retinue of terran special operatives that his parents—his REAL parents—once served with. When he accepts, Ross’s whole life changes. Ross’s natural greatness sets him on the fast-track at the Legion military academy. Despite being an emotionally perplexed creature with an underdeveloped sense of self-control and no real life experience, he’s put in charge of the famous Fourth Squad that his dad used to lead. And not a moment too soon. When all of the Legion’s officers and their husbands and wives decide to go on an irresponsible extended holiday, the nightmarish alien zerg descend on Tarsonis in droves. Ross is the only soldier in the entire Dominion military with enough bravado and drive to save the planet from annihilation! ---- We’re also working on a new collection of short stories to answer one of the questions we’re most often asked about our more famous heroes and villains—“But what were they like in their early years?” Discover the turbulent adolescence of popular faces like 13-galactic-cycles-old Zeratul as he struggles with his budding psionic powers, or join young Garrosh Hellscream as he deals with an absentee father and natural disasters on a planetary scale. Spend time with then-Warchief Thrall and Archmage Jaina Proudmoore in the warm summer days after the fall of Archimonde, when the mistrust between Alliance and Horde seems destined to fade away, and anything—''anything''—can happen. The Fledgling Heroes project is something that we’ve really wanted to do ever since we started making games, but we had to wait for the right time. And the right time... is now. 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